Equipment:
- need high-sided bowl to hold turkey for stuffing. also roasting pan and roasting rack
Techniques:
- icing breasts
- preheat to 400 degrees
- using pizza stone for radiating heat from bottom
- insert probe laterally from near the neck
- rub bird with oil
- 400F at 45 minutes
- 350F at 60-75 minutes more
- dangerous warming: stuff hot stuffing into turkey, put on rack, season with salt and pepper
Critical Theories:
- cook turkey dark meat to higher temp (175F) than breast (160F). Ensure that stuffing reaches high temp
- Hot enough for Malliard reaction 280 to 330 °F.
- Caramelization begins at 221F for fructose/fruit sugars/corn syrup, and 338F for table sugar/sucrose, and is desirable
- chilling breasts lower temperature of them relative to rest of bird, giving it more thermal to overcome
- hotter pizza stone cooks bottom faster.
References
- reference cooking turkey on thermoworks site
- reference alton brown
Caramelization points of sugars:
| Fructose | 105 °C (221 °F) |
| Galactose | 160 °C (320 °F) |
| Glucose | 150 °C (302 °F) |
| Sucrose | 170 °C (338 °F) |
| Maltose | 180 °C (360 °F) |